One year after Baltimore bridge collapse, NTSB finds 68 US bridges need to be assessed for risk of collapse if hit by ship

Sixty-eight bridges across the US should be assessed to see if they are at risk of collapse if hit by a ship, transportation safety officials found, while urging the bridges’ owners to undertake immediate vulnerability assessments. The findings are part of the National Transportation Safety Board’s ongoing investigation into the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last year.

Sixty-eight bridges across the US should be assessed to see if they are at risk of collapse if hit by a ship, transportation safety officials found, while urging the bridges’ owners to undertake immediate vulnerability assessments. The four urgent safety recommendations are part of the National Transportation Safety Board’s ongoing investigation into the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last year. In the early hours of March 26, 2024, the container ship Dali lost power after leaving the Port of Baltimore and struck a pillar of the Key Bridge, causing it to collapse, killing six construction workers who fell into the Patapsco River. The Dali suffered a pair of catastrophic electrical failures minutes before the crash, according to a preliminary report released by the NTSB last May. The Key Bridge was above the acceptable level of risk based on guidance established by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO, NTSB officials said. But the owner of the bridge never evaluated that risk. “The Maryland Transportation Authority never ran the calculation on the Key Bridge,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters Thursday. “Had they ran the calculation on the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the MDTA would have been aware that the bridge was almost 30 times greater than the risk threshold AASHTO sets for critical, essential bridges.” The NTSB identified 68 other bridges in 19 states spanning waterways frequented by cargo ships that, like the Key Bridge, were built before 1991 and do not have a current vulnerability assessment. Owners of the bridges that have higher than acceptable risk ratings should create a plan to reduce that risk, Thursday’s findings say. The Golden Gate Bridge in California; Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, George Washington and Verrazzano-Narrows bridges in New York City; the Walt Whitman and Benjamin Franklin bridges in Pennsylvania; the Sunshine Skyway in Florida and the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan all made the list.